


Golden Lyre

by heartratemonitor



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Culture, All conversation no release, Character Study, M/M, Musical Instruments, Post Season 5/Pre Season 6, Secret Relationship, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 14:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16160807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartratemonitor/pseuds/heartratemonitor
Summary: Lotor visits Matt's outpost to hear him play a ukulele from a toy store.





	Golden Lyre

Matt Holt’s listening station is a dusty tomb of scraps and metal relics. Lotor presses a hand against a nearby panel; the tech a stitched patchwork of repurposed garbage. Had the prince-now emperor been prone to sentiment, he’d admit an art to the salvaging beyond necessity. There’s marks of a person hesitant to jettison flotsam impractical to carry. It is a trait beneficial or disastrous, depending on the contents of the package.

A blaster clicks at the back of his head. Lotor raises his arms, more out of etiquette than fear, and turns. The man has barely filled out since his last meeting, but the old hollows of his face have evened into a not unpleasant shape. There’s parts smoothed out, and other parts sharpened and concealed. Lotor smiles delicately while the other raises his gun.

“You tracked me, you prick,” Matt says, irritated but not entirely surprised.

“This facility’s use is deprecated now that I am emperor,” Lotor retorts, evading.

Matt scowls, but lowers his weapon. “You could have asked me to meet somewhere neutral.”

“Would you like me to build you something with more recent technology?” He offers, like smoothing out a wrinkled sheet.

“Yeah,” A yes that is a no. “I for one, am a huge fan of Galra spyware peripherals.”

For all his outward anger, Matt has already replaced the blaster at its holster, walking in a straight beeline to the entrance of what is presumably his private quarters. Lotor follows his back, tight lipped as he mulls over the contradiction. It’s a stone he’s turned countless times with fruitless yields, and yet still returns to.

“I uh,” Matt starts. “I got a recent haul, but I’m tired of unloading those cows that come with purchase.”

The room holds little more than a bed, a table, and miscellaneous trunks of varying sizes. Lotor does not entertain possibilites of what hides inside them, noting instead that Matt has tossed off his boots and cape with a carelessness he appreciates, somehow. The visitor squints at the artificial red flower garland that hang close to the ceiling, jarring with the rest of the space’s contents. Matt laughs mirthlessly as he sits down, fisting at the blankets.

“Passed the time,” he says, distant. “I found a lot red scrap paper during one of my old routes.”

Its shape reminds Lotor of the juniberry’s four petal variant mutation, the only surviving trace of the old flower. Its seeds buried themselves in the crevices of soldier’s shoes, still thriving in a smattering of ancient planets conquered in the earlier end of Zarkon’s reign. He quiets at the coincidence, seating himself at the other edge of the bed.

“I like them.” Lotor drifts. Matt seems to ignore him, currently in the middle of rummaging through the contents of a storage bin. He procures a strange, small instrument of unknown materials, adorned with strings at the narrowing neck.

“Was hoping he’d have a ukulele made out of something besides plastic. I replaced the frets with whiskers from-” Matt pauses. “None of this preamble matters to you.”

He plays. Lotor's shoulders ease at the sound, while he observes the exacting machinations of Matt’s fingers. At the back of his mind, there’s the fairy tale a kitchen drudge relayed to him as a child in between pocketing treats. As legend goes, the first emperor surrendered his people’s ability of song in exchange for power, rendering Galra able to understand melody, but not compose.

 

_(“That’s ridiculous.”_

_“Earthlings have three photo-receptor cells. Your species has the perceptual color palette of a Balmeran mealworm.”_

_“Zarkon had to employ propaganda to convince soldiers that music is weak and frivolous to discourage them from preserving species that played any sort of tune, because people were so starved for it. Apples to oranges, Lotor.”_

_"What are apples and oranges?"_

_"You're never gonna see them, so it doesn't matter.")_

 

The music glides like a stream of water; Lotor wants to drown in it. From the lull, he snatches glimpses of Matt’s wandering eyes, holding with it judgment restrained by familiarity, along with something quieter, swallowed and diligently buried. He supposes that it’s mutual, the love for trinkets meant for swift disposal.

Matt stops. “You look like you want to say something.”

Lotor shakes his head. Matt sets the instrument aside on the desk, and unclasps the myriad of attachments that make up his suit, stripping down to a slimmer undercovering while humming the same song.

“Actually, what is the title?”

“Waterfall,” Matt says, digging through yet another box for something to eat. “My great grandma had a niche as a musical archivist. She collected a lot of old sounds from Pre-World War 3 after the Net Zero shutdown. This one got popular by chance discovery. Apparently it’s from a game or something?”

Both of them know that Lotor has no frame of reference for the bulk of what Matt drones on about, but Lotor is satisfied to listen anyway, because the contrast of Matt’s speaking and singing voice is enough to warrant silent observation.

 

_(“My voice isn’t actually that great,” Matt said once, plucking through a box gilded with narrow metal tines. It sounded like bells, or the ghost of a bird._

_“I have a very limited pool to compare to these days, and it’s the only one that’s freely offered.”_

_The human weighed his words with the care of a grocery clerk._

_"Guess I should be flattered.")_

 

“Do half-Galra know how to carry a tune?” he asks, in between bites of an appalling gray ration brick.

“If this is a ploy to get me to sing, it’s out of the question,” Lotor says, more emphatically than he would have liked. “But, to answer your own, I’ve met some who play percussion based devices.”

There’s a familiar pause that both know to be too perilous to fill with sentiment. Lotor settles for clasping Matt’s wrist, prying away the bar with his free hand.

“You need to let me buy you dinner.”

Matt smiles as though he is feigning love, characteristically cruel.

“Only if you sing.”

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was inspired by videos of parakeets that thrash to rock music. The bulk of it was written with this harp cover of [Waterfall](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkrJZQw114E) on repeat. No beta, and I rarely write nowadays, so I apologize for the quality issues.


End file.
